ship, whose life was early clouded by
insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the system
of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, which I am not
prepared either to support or contradict. After describing the system of
restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is not equally known
that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at
once--the force of passion and of youth--not unfrequently records its
own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of
nature by distinct and anomalous diseases. And, further, I have been
assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases--strange and
elaborate affections of the nervous system--are found _exclusively_
among the young men and women of the Quaker Society; that they are known
and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in
great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham; that
they assume a new type and a more inveterate character in the second or
third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted;
and, finally, that if this class of nervous derangements does not
increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because
the community itself--the Quaker body--does not increase, but, on the
contrary, is rather on the wane."

There exist many good stories which have for their point the passions of
the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a
shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a
north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in his Description
of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that
Barclay family which produced the apologist and the pugilist. He was a
colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen wild work in his day; but
in his old age a change came over him, and, becoming a follower of
George Fox, he retired to spend his latter days on his ancestral estate
in Kincardineshire. Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought
the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his
marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and
their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the
encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest
that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and
therefore thou art endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine,
because th